I still have a lot of problems with shadows a lot of the time and I think I finally figured out at least partly why. I suspect my shadows are being cast underground (for lack of a better way to explain).

Can someone please tell me what I am doing wrong here...it's getting frustrating to get a render almost done and then have to spend 4 hours futzing with lighting to get even minimal shadows to work.

I put my figures in, drop them to floor, pose them, move them about etc and drop them to floor again since sometimes I moved them up or back and that changes the position in relation to the floor.

Then I put in my background (mostly I use the cyclorama/mil environment, but sometimes I use microcosm), drop it to floor and instead of "dropping" it raises. The only way I have been able to "fix" this is to use the y position dial to move the background down so the figures aren't essentially under it, but then my shadows don't work right.

I'm sure I'm doing something easy wrong, but I can't figure it out and I'm just getting more and more frustrated.

I'm using P4 if that makes any difference.

Thanks
Towal

I'm assuming you're having trouble making shadows meet the character's feet? I don't know if your background props contain a floor - if not, use a prop plane, don't use the Poser ground. It has 'issues'. :) Drop to Floor doesn't always work accurately - Vicki 3 seems to suffer from this especially, for me anyway. But what's more important is that your characters' feet meet the ground, wherever it is - it isn't necessary for it to be at Y=0. I usually use one or more of the orthogonal cameras (front, side, back) and adjust the last bit manually.

When you tell a figure to drop, and it rises instead of dropping, the problem is usually in the Origin of the BODY. In the standard human-type figures (Posette, Dork, etc) the Y-value of Origin is set to 0.74, which is the height of the Hip from ground. Very often, creators will use this template to make non-human figures, and forget to change the Y value. You can fix this by editing the CR2. First copy the CR2 to a new file so you won't alter the original. In the new file, find the second occurrence of "actor BODY", and then run down through that section until you find the "origin" line. Change the 0.74 to 0.0 and you should then have a figure that will sit on the ground properly. (There could be other problems, and it's possible that zero is not the proper value for a specific figure.. but this is by far the most common problem.) Below is an example........ actor BODY:1 { name GetStringRes(1024,1) off bend 1 dynamicsLock 1 hidden 0 addToMenu 1 castsShadow 1 includeInDepthCue 1 parent UNIVERSE channels { zOffsetA zOffset .... Whole lot of other stuff ........ } endPoint 0 0.74 0.25 origin 0 0.74 0 < ------------- Change this line orientation 0 0 0 displayOrigin 0 displayMode USEPARENT customMaterial 0 locked 0 }

Some explaination of what sort of shadow probles you are having might help us answer your question. Sometimes just increasing the value on the 'Shadow' dial of the lights will help, for an infinite light you will need to double click on the dial and reset the limits to a value grater than one. The more geometry there is in the scene that has casts shadows enabled the greater will be the attenuation of the shadows, for this reason it it offten halps to turn 'Casts Shadows' off for the ground plain or background prop you are using, but there are also circumstances where turning it on can help with shadows, experiment. Zooming in with the shadow cams offten helps as well. Objects with some thickness offten receive shadows better than plains. Putting a Poser square under the floor prop sometimes helps with missing ankle or foot shadows (don't know why). And remember that in Poser 4 a light that is parallel to a plain will not cast shadows on that plain, tilt it slightly towards the plain.

I know about changing the map size and zooming the cameras and all that. I have spent HOURS changing map sizes, zooming, adding/deleting etc and 9 times out of 10 I end up remembering that maybe I didn't drop something to floor and then the shadows work so this time when I actually thought of it before I'd wasted a ton of time and got the background moving up instead of down I was equally frustrated :(

I attached a screen shot of the problem I am having. Krystal is dropped to floor, as is the background.

I should also mention that I rendered before putting in the background and I had shadows (not on the ground since there was no ground plane, but did have them from her arm on her dress etc) so I know at least some shadows are working.